SOUTH: 8 Sites
What:
Charleston Slave Mart
 Where:
Charleston, SC.
Why:
Before the Civil War, every city of any size in the South, and many in the North, had a
slave market. Few have been preserved. Even, few locations have been marked. Their absence
is only another indication of our failure to come to terms with 300 years of American
slavery. Which makes the existence of the Charleston Slave Mart rare and important.
Surprise:
Before war broke out, even the white people of Charleston were becoming aware that
something was deeply wrong in their culture. In 1856 a city ordinance was passed
forbidding the open-air sale of slaves. Which led to the use of "galleries" such
as this.
Internet site:
http://www.charlestoncvb.com/cvb/pages/index.jsp
What:
To Kill a Mockingbird
Where:
Monroeville, Ala
Why:
Clues, clues to what Gunnar Myrdal identified as and called the American dilemma: how do
the formerly enslaved and the former enslavers learn to live together as equals? Harper
Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird, is a native of Monroeville, which is where
the novel is in fact set. The book and the movie transformed the town and the self-image
of the townspeople. Every May a dramatized version of the novel is performed, in the
locations depicted in the novel.
Surprise:
One of Harper Lee’s playmates as a child in Monroeville was Truman Capote.
Internet site:
http://www.severnwriter.com/monroeville.htm
What:
New Echota State Historic Site
Where:
Calhoun, GA
Why:
Here is where the Trail of Tears began. Or maybe, "begins," because it seems
somehow never to have ended. For years Andrew Jackson dealt treacherously with the
natives, culminating in the mass, forced deportation of the Comanches and other tribes in
1839 from their tribal lands in the Southeast to Oklahoma. One of the several routes
started here. 16,000 left. 4,000 died on the way.
Internet sites:
http://ngeorgia.com/parks/new.html
http://ngeorgia.com/history/nghisttt.html
What:
Natchez Trace
Where:
From Nashville, TE to Natchez, MI.
Why:
This 350-mile highway, which follows the route of ancient Indian foot paths, is one of the
great American driving experiences. See our own
feature-length article about it.
Surprise:
An eight-hour insight into how a wide array of North American landscapes looked before
europeanization.
Internet site:
http://www.nps.gov/natr/
What:
Wright Brothers National Memorial
Where:
Kill Devil Hills, NC
Why:
For one thing, you’ll find out why a couple of bicycle mechanics from Dayton wound up
on the Atlantic seashore. See our own piece on the site. You’ll also learn a lot
more. See our own feature on the park that now
occupies the site.
Surprise:
Even today to get to the Outer Banks of North Carolina you have to drive and drive,
crossing many bridges. Apart from the daunting aeronautical challenges the Wrights had to
overcome, the difficulty in getting here with all their equipment in the early 1900s is
astonishing.
Internet site:
http://www.nps.gov/wrbr/
What:
Key West
Where:
Key West, FL.
Why:
Key West.
Surprise:
Read Laurence Shames’s novels before you go.
Internet site:
http://www.keywest.com/
What:
Hippie Hollow
Where:
West of Austin, TX.
Why:
American yin-yang, that’s why. Fifteen miles to the east of the Travis County park
known as "Hippie Hollow" you have the state capitol, where in decade after
decade Texas governors have presided over and given their approval, either tacit or
explicit, to the largest sequence of executions in the United States. Yet here, a few
miles away, is one of the few explicitly legal places to swim naked in the United Sates.
That it happens also to be extraordinarily beautiful (from dense cedar forests limestone
ledges descend gently to cool, clear lake water) only adds to the life vs. death
metaphysical contrast.
Surprise:
The park is patrolled unobtrusively and politely by Travis County park rangers and by
Sheriff’s deputies who day in and day out chat happily with naked people of all ages,
races, and sexual persuasions and, um, physical condition.
Internet sites:
http://www.co.travis.tx.us/tnr/parks/hippie_hollow.htm
http://www.sss.org/texnude/hhpix.html
What:
Spindletop.
Where:
Beaumont TX.
Why:
Uncannily, in a sense the 20th century really did begin almost on time. On
January 10, 1901, a bunch of pioneer wildcatters drilling for oil in a place where
everybody said they were crazy to drill struck it rich. The primitive well just outside of
Beaumont exploded and a gusher of oil such as no one had ever seen began spewing out of
the earth. The well was called "Spindletop."
Days passed before the flow was
controlled. In the first hour of the gusher, more oil flowed from Spindletop than had been
produced in the entire world up until then. After Spindletop was finally got under
control, other wells were drilled, many other wells, and the fuel that would supply energy
for the new century was underway.
Surprise:
Most of the big corporate players in oil, whose names we still know today, can in one way
or another trace their roots back to Spindletop or to wells drilled in the following years
in the vast East Texas oil fields.
Internet site:
http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/SS/dos3.html
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